


Emptiness

by SoongTypeDisaster



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Android Emotions, Angst, Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Off-screen death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26414719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoongTypeDisaster/pseuds/SoongTypeDisaster
Summary: Data learns the feeling of loss.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 26





	Emptiness

**Author's Note:**

> So hi I don't know what possessed me to do this, but have an AU where Data outlives everyone and never installed his emotion chip, only to find out in the hardest way possible that he never needed it.

He thought he would be prepared when the time came. He knew, after all, that as an android he would far outlive his friends. And how long had he insisted that he could not feel emotion? That he did not experience pain?

The emotion chip had long ago been forgotten, after all. He’d never even installed it. Too much risk, he decided in the end. And so it had been discarded.

The first to go was the captain. Respected colleague. Father figure. He had written it off as a malfunction, then. Could not find the source. Could not find a way to repair it. And so the strange hollow ache became a part of him. He learned to function through it. Eventually it lessened.

The touch of gray appeared on its own. Unbidden. Strange, when he had control over all those processes. He thought perhaps he had a subconscious after all. A part of him that wished to age with his friends. He permitted the gray to remain.

Doctor Crusher’s loss elicited the same strange emptiness. Still he pushed it aside. He did not have the emotion chip. He did not have emotion.

More of his friends began to grow old. To leave his life. One by one they left him, and though he had always assumed he would find new friends, though he did find a few, the emptiness would not be filled. He began to recognize it as the same sensation he'd experienced when Tasha was killed.

Grief, perhaps? But Counselor Troi was no longer around to answer such questions. He never quite felt the same asking anyone else. That should have been his first clue.

It was Geordi’s death that broke him. The news was relayed to him while he was on duty, and he did something most uncharacteristic. Something he had rarely done in his long Starfleet career.

He left his post without permission.

The old uniform was still in his quarters. There were new ones now, but for some reason he had felt the need to keep this one in particular.

He put it on.

He sank to the floor.

He had not even bothered to turn on the lights, and sat now in the dark, feeling the weight of that same emptiness squeeze at his chest. He could no longer deny it anymore. Could no longer brush it off as some simple malfunction. His head fell into his hands, cold android tears spilling between his fingers to leave dark, oily stains on his shirt. He didn't know how long he stayed there. Long enough for strands of hair to come loose as he rubbed messily at his eyes and failed to regain his composure.

So this was grief.

His best friend was dead.

And tomorrow he would resign.


End file.
